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Appel à article : Film Coproduction in Eastern Europe – Special Issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema

Call for Papers: « Film Coproduction in Eastern Europe From 1949 to the Present » Special Issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema

Guest edited by Jonathan Owen

Over the last 20 years film coproduction has attracted increasing scholarly attention, in tandem with the ascendancy of ‘transnational cinema’ as a critical paradigm. Much of this research has concerned West European cinemas, and has helped revise prior historical accounts of the region’s film industries. While the study of coproductions from the so-called ‘other Europe’ has already seen some important pioneering contributions (from, say, Pavel Skopal, Ewa Mazierska and Eva Naripea), this remains an area with rich potential for further research. To examine the rise of the coproduction in Eastern Europe from the 1950s onwards is to offer a perhaps even greater challenge to established preconceptions helping to problematise the notion of state-socialist film industries as strictly ‘isolationist’ entities, unconcerned with international success and subordinated to predominantly ideological interests. The very variation in the forms that coproduction took tell an entire story, as we move from the Soviet-directed coproduction policies of the late 1940s and 1950s, in which transnational ventures tend to be conducted among socialist Bloc countries and driven by ideological expansionism, through to the pursuit of Western co-producing partners in the 1960s, when the motivations were more often the pragmatic ones of economic returns and access to superior equipment. Finally, the increase in East European coproduction since the fall of communism reflects an adjustment both to European integration and to life within the global marketplace, with nations brought together under EU funding frameworks and local facilities put at the service of large Hollywood productions. Coproduction has played an important role in certain manifestations of popular cinema, from the fairy-tale to the ‘Indianerfilm’ or Red Western. But art films too – from Forman’s The Fireman’s Ball (1967) to Szabó’s Mephisto (1981) – have arisen from coproduction ventures with Western producers willing to finance prestigious auteur filmmakers. In Eastern Europe as elsewhere, coproduction has facilitated a mutual interpenetration of genres and aesthetic styles and made for striking hybrids of cultural and national identity. For this special issue of SEEC, we invite contributions on any aspects of East European coproduction from 1949 to the present. Articles may deal with coproduction between East European countries themselves or between Eastern Europe and other parts of the world (including Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as Western Europe and North America). We welcome articles dealing with institutions, policy and production as well as more textually oriented studies exploring the aesthetic and representational impacts of coproduction. Topics may include but are not limited to:

The
political and ideological dimensions of coproduction (coproduction as a
means of ideological control and expansion, an expression of ‘Third
World
solidarity’, etc).

Coproduction
in relation to national and transnational film policies during the
communist and post-communist periods (state-socialist film policy,
Eurimages
funding, etc).

Coproduction and its relations to international distribution and festival circuits.

The production practices and technologies of coproduction (e.g. multinational casting, dubbing, alternative cuts).

The relations between coproduction and ‘small cinemas’.

Coproduction and changes in state boundaries (e.g. from Czechoslovakia to the Czech and Slovak republics).

Actors, stardom and performance in the coproduction.

Representations
of national and transnational identity in coproduced films; the signs
and ‘marks’ of national or transnational status in content or
aesthetics.

Please send a 200-word article proposal, together with a short bio, to Jonathan Owen (jonathan.lyndon.owen@gmail.com)
or Ewa Mazierska (EHMazierska@uclan.ac.uk)
by 1 September 2019. The deadline for finished articles (which should be between 6000-7000 words) is 1 February 2020.